


it's too hard to tell if the gun is mine or yours

by catharsia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Enjolras is just trying to do his job and murder someone, Grantaire is not obliging, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, i might do a follow up fic where they actually get together but for now its just flirting, there are way too many gratuitous descriptions of the sunlight in enj's hair in this, this is literally the least hardcore assassin au ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:14:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22913065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catharsia/pseuds/catharsia
Summary: Enjolras, an experienced professional killer, is given a new contract and a new target: Grantaire, an artist who spends every Tuesday morning drawing at a small café.This should be the end of the story. Things don't exactly go the way Enjolras plans.
Relationships: Enjolras & Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 150





	it's too hard to tell if the gun is mine or yours

Enjolras opens his latest case file at 08:31. He's sitting in his apartment, warm sunlight filtering in through the thick blinds, just enough to turn the cream furnishings of the cramped kitchen a hazy butter-yellow. His chair scrapes against the floor a little as he leans back, balanced perfectly, the chair's front legs hovering off the ground.

There's a small espresso cup hooked around the little finger of his right hand.

With the left, he turns the pages of the file. He goes through it methodically: target's location, building, then job and general habits before he allows himself to look at the most interesting parts, the personal details that reveal the target's name, and the photo that puts a face to it.

The target, he learns, lives on the west side of the city, almost exactly the same distance from the centre as Enjolras himself on the east. His exact living situation isn't disclosed, but specifics are given for his routine, including the café he visits every Tuesday morning. He's an artist; he likes to take work to this café, apparently, as he's friends with one of the female baristas, named Eponine. Enjolras wonders what medium he specialises in: the file doesn't say. He wonders if he is having an affair with the barista: the file quickly provides evidence to refute that. Orientation: homosexual. They must be close friends, then.

He turns back to the first page, where the target's name lies printed in small, neat block capitals: RENÉ GRANTAIRE.

Below that, the photo. Enjolras forces himself to wait; runs his fingers smoothly over the small capital letters of GRANTAIRE and then RENÉ; tilts his espresso cup back to his lips and drains it dry. The sun is growing higher, slowly, but the light is still so warm, now feeding through the blinds to paint bold bright lines onto Enjolras's cheeks.

Finally, he allows himself to see the man's face.

Grantaire is pictured scowling, relatively square jaw set as his dark eyes glare into the camera. It looks almost like a criminal mugshot; Enjolras wonders vaguely if it _is_. The profile of a mere artist does not seem to fit with the type of man his superiors would be interested in eliminating. His cheekbones are wide but fairly sculpted; his brow heavy set but the eyebrows themselves thick and strangely perfectly sculpted. His nose is crooked, as if from a break long ago. His hair is mostly cropped, but dark curls protrude over his forehead from the top of the frame.

Enjolras notes absently that the man is very unconventionally attractive.

His height reads 6'2, his age 28.

Enjolras closes the file softly, letting the espresso cup on his little finger lower to the table with a quiet clatter. He closes his eyes for a moment and stretches, still perfectly poised on the two chair legs, a warm and comfortable cat in the stillness of the summer morning, safely shut away from the world except for the soft beauty of the light. Later on in the day it will be uncomfortably hot; now, it is perfect.

Enjolras opens his eyes. It is 09:21.

He thinks he will go out to lunch today.

\----

Enjolras steps onto a train on the underground at 10:18. The heat has risen, swirling through the pavements and curling up to meet the city in its sweltering embrace, but down here it is surprisingly cool, and Enjolras feels an almost chilling breeze on his arms as the train rushes in to meet the platform.

On it, he refrains from taking a seat, although they are available; he leans against the wall on a carriage partition instead, one hand loosely resting on a bar, the other flicking back and forwards over the keys on his phone as he inputs Le Café Musain into the search bar and is irritated to remember that there is no internet connection down here.

The train jolts around a corner, and in his frustration Enjolras is distracted from remembering to bend his knees and maintain balance; he is thrown a little way across the carriage, stumbling into someone else's warm, solid body.

'Shit,' he says, regaining his footing as their arms wrap fully around him to steady both of them. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' they respond, and as they let Enjolras go he is distracted with the realisation that his phone has slipped from his hand.

He turns, eyes scanning the mottled grey-mottled dirt floor of the carriage, but he cannot see it anywhere, and his gaze swerves down the aisle between the rows of mostly-empty seats.

He's still trying to see discreetly behind a woman's backpack, propped against her seat on the floor, when the train halts again, and he frowns in consternation, recognising it isn't there.

'I'm sorry, have you seen -' he begins, turning back to the stranger who caught him, but notes in surprise that they are no longer there: the doors of the carriage have opened, and the crowd is milling outside, and new passengers are coming through the opening, but the person - _it was a man_ , Enjolras registers - is gone.

\----

Enjolras is still annoyed at himself for losing both his phone and the stranger, as he alights off the underground at the closest stop to the café. He's growing more and more convinced the man must've taken his phone, that he's had an unfortunate encounter with a skilled pickpocket, judging by the speed with which the man managed to disembark and escape... but Enjolras has trained as a fucking contract killer for years, knows better than to be deceived by a petty criminal no matter how atypical the circumstance.

The world is radiant as he steps out into it, a wash of over-saturated colour in a commercial but quiet district of the city that looks as if it prides itself on being quaint: the sun gleams off hand-painted, hand-varnished wooden signs all along both sides of the streets, and the crooked street gutters line a mess of outdoor table settings for two and racks full of painted silk scarves blowing in the wind. The perfect place for an artist named Grantaire to spend his mornings, painting and drinking lattes. Enjolras realises he's beginning to romanticise and sharply reins in his thoughts: he has no idea if the man's coffee order is a latte.

Bitterly, he stops outside the station's overground exit to consult a standing map just outside the stairs, feeling like either a middle aged technology-skeptic or a particularly clueless tourist. He catches sight of the street that the café is on, just a few minutes' walk away from his location, and sets out. He shrugs his jacket from his shoulders in the heat as he goes, leaving his bare shoulders exposed in a red wifebeater. He's wearing thin black and red sweats along with it, and white trainers: a perfectly inconspicuous outfit for a perfectly inconspicuous character. He's found over the years that sports attire helps explain away his toned muscles in a harmless fashion: 'gym addict' is a good cover and one that gives him enough of an assumed personality that people don't tend to search for more depth of character.

The stroll through the neighbourhood is pleasant, and helps calm him down from the annoyance of the loss of his phone. Put into perspective, it's not really a problem: it was a burner phone, only loaded with a few contacts and with minimal functionality or duration of hardware; he has several others back in his apartment and would probably have thrown it out at the end of this job as a precaution regardless. It's the apparent theft, and the ease with which it was accomplished, that nags at him.

He arrives at Le Café Musain at 10:52. He pauses before he gets there, stopping outside the windows of a small shop for designer knock offs as if something piques his interest, and then turns to examine the café.

He scans its front quickly. Charming, vintage, medium size; CAFÉ MUSAIN is printed on a faded wooden sign hanging above the lower floor (reasonably tall, elevated off the street with two short flights of stairs leading up to the door). He can just see into the interior to make out the tables in the windows and a hint of wooden decor inside.

He makes up his mind and wanders over to the café with careful nonchalance, pushing open the door. It's stiff; it chimes.

Inside, the wide floor-to-ceiling windows provide bright natural light throughout a relatively large space. Enjolras knows from the file that the artist won't be here today - it isn't his regular Tuesday. He heads over to the counter and joins the short queue. The place is wooden everywhere, like he expected, although that's hardly significant as he doesn't anticipate locking the artist up in here and burning the place down.

'Can I help?' says the barista. Relatively short, dark eyed, blonde hair tucked back into a loose bun that straggles around her neck. Looks tough despite her slight frame. Enjolras's eyes stray down to her name tag, and he feels a slight pulse run through him: Eponine, it reads.

'Can I have a Red Bull?' he says, grimacing internally: he hates them, but doesn't think his new persona - he decides to call him James (his first thought is Kyle, but that's too on-the-nose) would drink his normal coffee order. As a second thought, he grabs an energy bar from the counter and hands that over the till as well.

'You, uh, you work here regularly?' James goes for a smile.

Eponine, to her credit, looks some mix of amused and uninterested. Enjolras wouldn't be interested in James, either. 'Every Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I've been doing it for about six months.'

Definitely Grantaire's Eponine. Enjolras takes the Red Bull with a smile and goes to find a table. He sits in the corner for a while, observing the flows of customers. There seem to be a lot of regulars: Eponine brings them their orders without them having to say a word, and many of them greet her by name.

Enjolras takes his time to check for inconspicuous places to wait outside as he leaves.

\----

Enjolras first goes to the café on a Friday. By Tuesday, his plans have been fully formed. He wakes at 08:36 to eat a leisurely breakfast, curled up on a kitchen chair with a bowl of cereal that tastes somewhat less like sawdust with added berries and a huge pot of coffee on the side.

Then he stretches, heading over to his hidden safe, and keys in the long combination to open it. He withdraws a small hand gun, checking its fully loaded although he knows that's the case. It's a bit of a classic, an elegant Colt, and he nestles it in his splayed palm for a moment before letting his fingers close around it and pushing it into the concealed compartment at the top of his small backpack.

He slips on running trainers and shorts, blue this time, with a white wifebeater. He shoves knock off AirPods into his ears for a final touch, not intending to turn them on at any point.

He jogs down the street to Le Café Musain at 09:37, feeling sweat beginning to collect at the nape of his neck, underneath the knot he's tied his hair in: it is the warmest day of the week so far, and the pavement is dry and hot and cracked beneath him. His feet itch in his shoes, and he considers the utter stupidity of running fanatics like James who genuinely do this in this heat.

He's relieved to reach the café stairs; he doesn't redden easily but he knows there is a light flush dusting the top of his cheeks as he goes through the doors, more loudly as James than Enjolras would have done. He grins as he sees Eponine, making sure to catch her eye: James is not a man who would ignore an acquaintance, especially a pretty female one.

His eyes slip off to the side as he goes up to the counter, and he immediately thinks, Grantaire.

The man is sitting in exactly the same table Enjolras was occupying four days previously. Enjolras cannot look too closely, but the mass of dark curls, exactly as he imagined them, in his peripheral vision tells him he has the correct target.

He hands an energy bar over the counter.

'Red Bull?' Eponine says with a lightly mocking tone as he does so, and he considers that perhaps less of the café's customers are regulars than he thought, and the girl just has a weirdly good memory.

'You got it,' he says, chest beginning to rise and fall less quickly from his run through the baking streets. He pulls the kind of dopey post-endorphin-release expression onto his face that he thinks James might have after a workout.

'Thanks, Ep,' he says, smiling as she hands him his Red Bull, and checks his phone as he wanders over towards the only empty table, one just past Grantaire's. Nothing. He's unsurprised; the only people with this number are his handlers and a contact of his called Montparnasse who is a creep and probably not currently awake, considering his proclivity to get up at midday.

He glances up from his phone as he sits down, and -

'Why would you ever choose to drink that?'

Enjolras looks up in surprise to see Grantaire leaning over, looking down at Enjolras's hands in apparent disgust.

Enjolras follows his eyes down to the Red Bull and winces, thinking, _I have no idea_. Instead, he glances over to Grantaire's table and sees what looks like a half decanted bottle of scotch on the table and blinks.

That definitely hadn't factored into his mental depictions of Grantaire's coffee order.

'You're asking me?' says James, voice bantering, nodding his head towards the scotch.

Grantaire grins, apparently unsurprised by the reply. 'Touché.'

On reflection, Enjolras half wonders if Grantaire opened himself up to that one on purpose to start a conversation. He really hadn't been planning on making himself known to the target: it presents a whole range of annoying possibilities at the stage where he has to follow him home, but he supposes he can work with it.

'Shit, man,' he says, leaning over the Grantaire's table slightly, eyes wide. 'Sorry, I didn't mean to stare, but... that's really amazing.'

The thing is that Enjolras doesn't even have to lie. Grantaire is drawing, and it's kind of incredible. It's a ballpoint sketch, all messy lines and fast hand movements, and yet within it there's the smoothness and realism of a Renaissance painting, although he doesn't know the first thing about art either as Enjolras or as James.

Grantaire looks momentarily startled. His hand hovers over the corner of the drawing a little protectively, before he seems to decide James has already seen the whole thing and there's no point trying to cover it. It's the interior of the cafe, but turned into some kind of summer siesta, its occupants reclining on beach towels on tables, or clothed in vintage bathing suits with comically oversized retro sunglasses.

'Oh, thanks. It's just a quick sketch... I'm finding it hard to really focus in this heat.'

Self-effacing, Enjolras thinks. Shy? Although that definitely doesn't match with the start of the conversation.

Grantaire's eyes flick up and down Enjolras's body. 'Clearly it isn't bothering you so much, if you've been out for a run.'

Okay, no, confident. The self-deprecation thing is probably more just in connection to his art.

'Oh, I run in all weathers,' Enjolras says with a laugh, making an effort to get into James-mode. 'It feels great when I'm through even if it's hell out.'

'Huh,' says Grantaire, seeming to lose interest. Enjolras maybe regrets his choice of cover, now. Fuck knows he'd lose interest in James too if he met him.

'I'm James,' says James, sticking out his hand and pulling his chair behind him close enough that he's not at Grantaire's table but he's very much angling himself to talk to him.

'Grantaire,' says Grantaire.

'Oh, cool. Is that a, uh...'

'Last name. Everyone uses it, even my close family and friends.'

'Oh, right, I get it.'

'What's yours?' says Grantaire.

'Huh?' says Enjolras.

'Last name.'

'Denn,' says Enjolras smoothly.

Grantaire raises an eyebrow. 'James Denn, really?'

Enjolras could kick himself as he realises. Crap, accidental word association. It's been years since he's made a mistake as dumb as that, but for some reason something about Grantaire or the heat or whatever has really caught him off guard today.

Grantaire is smirking at him, slightly, but when Enjolras blinks it's vanished. 'Uh, yeah,' he says, faking a laugh. 'My parents were big James Dean fans and now I'm stuck with it. Crappy, huh?'

'Well, you certainly have the looks down,' says Grantaire, eyes flicking up and down Enjolras's body once again, and Enjolras nearly chokes on a gulp of Red Bull. Dressed as the epitome of the bland straight white male and his attractive target is hitting on him. The universe is cruel sometimes.

James gives a confused laugh and they leave it at that for the moment.

\----

James leaves the café around ten minutes later, after only a few more short exchanges with Grantaire that mostly amount to small talk. Leaving so quickly is unfortunate, but necessary, because there's no way that Enjolras can exit straight after Grantaire: it'll look way too suspicious to Eponine or anyone else who remembers, once Grantaire shows up dead.

Enjolras lurks in a thin alley across the street, next to a vintage store, and hopes Grantaire will leave the café soon so he can tail him home. Grantaire is spectacularly unobliging, and Enjolras is still waiting in the hot, dingy alley three hours later when Grantaire emerges at 11:57.

Finally. Enjolras breathes a sigh of relief, uncoiling his aching limbs, and peers around the corner to see Grantaire set off down the street in the direction Enjolras had run up to the café earlier. At a safe distance, Enjolras follows, ducking behind vans and trees and other people. He's skilled at tracking and following, always has been, but his skills are barely necessary here: Grantaire continues at a sedate and steady pace and doesn't turn his head once.

They continue on like this for about six streets, heading further onto the west side of the city, away from the centre and towards a dingy, semi-residential area that Enjolras supposes an up and coming artist in his late 20s might easily occupy. He considers going for it right now, calling out to him and blowing his brains out at close range, but they're definitely still too in the open and Enjolras isn't audacious to the point of lunacy. He'd really prefer to do this somewhere he has a chance to hide the body.

Grantaire turns around the corner of a street ahead of him; the road Enjolras is still on is short, and it takes him around fifteen seconds before he can reach that same turning and put his head around the corner of the dark brick building.

He hisses in irritation. Grantaire has vanished.

He scans both sides of the street to be sure, but Grantaire is certainly not there anymore: there's absolutely no movement. Enjolras would've thought he'd have arrived at least in time to see the man going through a door, but in the oppressive dustiness of midday the street is as dead as if it's been deserted for a hundred years. Fuck. Grantaire has vanished into thin air.

Enjolras hangs around there for another few moments, but clearly he's missed Grantaire and the target is not going to be eliminated today. A little annoyed, he takes a minute instead to survey the street. The name _Rue de la Paix_ is the legend of a cracked sign hanging high on a building, the other side of the street. It's fully residential: all houses, not apartments, but small ones, none detached.

Enjolras picks up his phone and googles for the nearest underground station to take him home.

\----

Enjolras goes back to the Rue de la Paix the next day and manages to spend six hours there, waiting, but Grantaire does not emerge. He repeats this Thursday and Friday and by then he is so annoyed - and worried someone will catch onto his lurking - that by the time he is travelling home on Friday, he resolves simply to return to the café on the next Tuesday and try his luck following Grantaire home again.

Enjolras unlocks his apartment door and immediately tenses. Something is off, and it takes him mere seconds to recognise what: the kitchen is suffused with light, as is the living room, and his bedroom, and, yes, the bathroom when he checks. He has both curtains and blinds on every window, never opens any of them like this during the day, and yet they have all been drawn fully open. Outside in the street, a mere floor down, he can see people wandering along the pavement clear as day: he knows they will be able to see him just as easily.

Eyes narrowed, Enjolras retreats back into his kitchen and cautiously pulls the blinds taut shut. Nothing untoward occurs, and he's largely unsurprised: he suspects it's more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. He shuts everything else back up, not bothering to check for fingerprints: he knows there won't be any.

Someone has broken into his apartment; someone that must know who he is.

It's a professional job, whoever has accomplished it: it takes him a while to even find the point of entry, until he notices the second living room window has been carefully forced. He knows there's no point fixing it, that if someone has been this determined to break in (and to let him know about it) then that won't change a thing if they decide to return.

In his safe, empty as usual except for a single gun, he pries its mechanisms open to discover it has been entirely unloaded. He checks on his hidden safe in consternation, but to his relief everything there is intact: the intruder has not found it.

There is nothing else that is both valuable and incriminating in his house. His cards and cash are buried in the backpack he's taken out with him today: he checks on them anyway despite knowing it's irrational. In that bag are also his Colt, and the case file for Grantaire. He checks on both of those, too, and finds them safe with a strong feeling of relief.

It's only when he sits down at the kitchen table that he realises anything else is amiss.

In the middle of the table, delicately carved as if by a fine and forceful knife, wielded with all the leisure time in the world, is a large letter R.

\----

Enjolras messages his handlers that evening to request a change of apartment, detailing why.

He receives no response, not even by the next morning, which is their way of saying no.

Enjolras considers that he should probably change apartment anyway and rejects the idea. He trusts his superiors. (Does he?) Okay, he isn't particularly enamored with the idea of disobeying them, which is effectively what he would be doing in their eyes by moving, considering he hasn't been given the go-ahead. He's always been a good operative: he doesn't want to break that habit now.

Enjolras decides he doesn't particularly want to leave his apartment at all that day. He sits at his kitchen table, silk-butter light flooding in around him and turning his hair into a golden halo, wild and bright and righteous on top of his head.

Instead of going anywhere, he opens the case file and adds another sheet of plain A4 paper to it, upon which he writes his notes.

RESIDENCE  
\- Somewhere on Rue de la Paix, suspected north side

PERSONALITY  
\- Target is confident and has no qualms about talking to strangers  
\- Target goes by his last name only  
\- Target is particularly good at disappearing

Enjolras bites his lip at that. Grantaire's voice, replayed in his head, is sounding more and more familiar to him. He is almost convinced he has heard it recently, very recently - but, no. He's had one conversation with the man. He's probably imagining what he sounds like wrongly by now, days after the event.

He'll wait for Tuesday.

\----

Tuesday comes around and Enjolras is jogging up to the café by 09:36, soon after its opening. He's really regretting his choice of persona and activity, by now. The weather is only growing hotter, unseasonably so.

'You want ice in this?' Eponine asks, handing him his Red Bull, and he nods quickly, not least because he's hoping it will dilute the flavour.

'James!' he hears someone call, and whirls around.

Grantaire's voice is exactly as it has been in his memory.

Also, how the hell did Enjolras not notice him when he came in? Grantaire has switched to another table on the exact opposite side of the café, and Enjolras has no idea why that throws him so much. (Maybe it's because he's imagined Grantaire as he first saw him so many times, by now, that he's surprised to find he exists and can move around outside Enjolras's head.)

It's so soon after opening that they and an elderly couple are the only patrons in the café.

Enjolras fixes a smile onto his face and walks over. 'Hey! Grantaire, right?'

Grantaire's smile is overly amused, and Enjolras gets the uncomfortable impression that Grantaire is fully aware of the bluff.

'Yeah. You're running again? Maybe you're crazier than I thought. Is this a regular thing for you, now?'

'It's always regular. I just switched up my route,' Enjolras says, smiling with casual looseness. He can do this. He's done this a million times, adopting fake personas to fool hosts of people. He's talked to targets before, often enough, as well.

'How lucky for you,' Grantaire says, voice laced with a faint irony (is that Enjolras's overactive imagination?). 'I'm here every Tuesday while Eponine's shift is on.'

'Oh, you know her?' says Enjolras blithely.

'Yeah, Ep and I go way back, to preschool. What about you?'

'What about me?'

Grantaire spreads his hands. 'Give me anything. Childhood friends, tragic backstory, hobbies other than running in weirdly hot weather?'

God, he has to be joking. Enjolras leans back, wondering about James's childhood, and decides to keep it as close to his own as he can to avoid confusion.

'Childhood friends: two that I'm still close with, Combeferre and Courfeyrac.'

'What do they do?'

Grantaire is beaming, damn him. He's lightly shading with his hand as he talks. Today's sketch is pencil and - looks a hell of a lot like Enjolras, even upside down and barely formed. Enjolras decides not to comment on that: James is unobservant.

'Ferre is a lawyer. Courf is... well, a lot of things. He tried being a fashion intern but that didn't work out. 'Creative differences' with his boss, but anyone who worked with Courf in fashion would probably have 'creative differences' with him. Now he's drifting, I suppose.'

'And what about you?'

'I studied Poli Sci at uni,' Enjolras says truthfully. There were enough idiots on his course that it stands up as a decent backstory for James too. 'And now I guess I'm drifting too. I came down to the city for the summer to see about a job, but no luck so far.'

'Not too tragic as backstories go,' Grantaire says, smiling.

'What about you?' Enjolras says swiftly, but Grantaire frowns. 'Ah, what about your hobbies?'

Enjolras shrugs. 'Well, running, clearly. At home I...' He gives an infinitesimal pause, running through a list of options. '... swim a lot. And my dad and I try to cook together, but we're both crap at it.'

There, that sounds harmless enough: exercise and macho bonding.

'Well, we'll have to fix that,' Grantaire says. 'Now, about me. I have no childhood friends I still talk to except Ep, my tragic backstory is limited to borderline alcoholism, as I'm sure you guessed from the morning scotch, and I'm an artist whose main hobbies include not making any art and actually being a decent cook.'

'You seem to be making art now,' Enjolras comments, looking down at the pencil drawing, having finally resolved to call him out on it.

Grantaire grins and holds it up. 'You're pretty. I was inspired.'

It _is_ Enjolras, light filtering in onto his face and paling his eyes and lips with its gleam, hair fading out into the background as if its paleness is too fragile to remain visible under the sun. It's impressive, and its also definitely a flirtatious move.

Enjolras considers for a despairing moment that even when dressed as a dudebro, he's apparently blatantly not straight. That, or Grantaire is just very hopeful. Or teasing him. Or perhaps all three of those are somewhat true.

Enjolras realises his lack of speech has created a noticeable pause in the conversation. 'Ah,' he says, wetting his lower lip slightly, 'well, I'm flattered.'

It's a response that has very little of James's personality behind it. Grantaire's grin widens, and the uneasy sense that he's toying with Enjolras (which has been increasingly present all morning) widens with it.

'So, you studied Poli Sci,' Grantaire says, the paper back on the table, pencil running over it, making refinements. 'Any political lectures you're dying to give me?'

'Not really,' Enjolras snaps slightly, suddenly inexplicably irritated and definitely on edge. 'I think I have to go. See you around.'

'If you're sure,' Grantaire says with a wink.

Enjolras hurries out of there.

\----

Grantaire apparently doesn't value Enjolras's time one iota, exiting the café at 11:53. He walks more quickly, this time, and Enjolras has to concentrate to keep up, twice nearly losing him among the traffic and takeaway vans scattered through the streets.

Grantaire never turns his head.

They reach the same turning point onto the Rue de la Paix as a week earlier, but this time Enjolras is prepared, and determined to keep hold of the target. He runs behind him silent as a cat, and is crouched behind a car a mere ten metres away from Grantaire as he rounds the corner, this time. Enjolras whips around the corner, moments later, to discover Grantaire gone, again.

Biting back the urge to snarl _fuck_ , Enjolras stares around, now horribly convinced Grantaire has caught on: that fast a disappearance cannot be coincidental. Grantaire has to have realised he is being tailed, and very possibly that he is being tailed by Enjolras - James.

Well, Enjolras has a gun, and a contract, and he isn't leaving without getting _something_. Grantaire could be gone from here tomorrow, scared off, and Enjolras will have failed a job for the first time in years.

He scans the street, feeling a sense of utter deja vu that is all too easily placed from the week before. Assured that no potential bystanders are stirring along the street, he moves down along the road, searching for some kind of hiding place, some kind of escape, the kind Grantaire must have sprinted to in order to lose Enjolras so quickly.

A few buildings down, his attention is piqued by a narrow alleyway between two of the houses. Some of them are detached, then, after all: he pauses for a moment, staring down into the semi-darkness, then with his slides his hand smoothly into his hand and wraps his fingers around the reassuring solidity of the Colt.

The buildings are double storied and tall, tall enough that the sunlight cannot reach down into this tall thin tunnel, and the ground is almost damp although its hasn't rained in weeks. Enjolras noiselessly steps into the narrow space, moving down it slowly, checking for any escape route it might present.

He's rewarded at the end of the alley by the sight of a second floor window smashed above his head, mounted into the wall of the house on his right hand side. The top panel still contains half its glass, fractured and sharp and dangerous, but the lower panel is fully empty and probably just large enough to slide through. It's high, but Enjolras thinks he or any other person of reasonable skill could climb to it.

This doesn't explain where Grantaire has gone. He's an artist, for fuck's sake. (Is he?) Artists don't scale buildings or have escape plans from contract killers.

Enjolras looks up at the window one last time, considering climbing it just to check, when his eyes skate over an irregularity on the brickwork just below it. Frowning, he steps closer to the wall, narrowing his eyes up at the aberration.

Painted in thin and elegant script is a white letter R.

\----

Abandoning the mission entirely, Enjolras leaves the neighbourhood as quickly as possible and takes the underground home. He considers getting off at a different platform, switching onto another line, losing any potential pursuers in the station crowds, but remembers his kitchen table and knows it's pointless: they have already found him.

He's been stupidly careless on this mission from beginning to end. He should've taken precautions, should've concealed his routes, should never have let Grantaire speak to him, but how he been to know it would be anything other than a routine hit on a harmless artist? Careless, careless.

He arrives back at his apartment at 12:47. The windows are closed, this time, and he collapses into a chair in the kitchen in relief. He hasn't reloaded the gun in the safe, and on consideration doesn't bother.

He spends an afternoon cloaked in rich yellow light, birds singing just outside, laptop lying open as he considers his options. He could run (he could lose them. He's just as good at vanishing as Grantaire seems to be, when he puts his mind to it). But outrunning his employers is a different matter, and they haven't given him permission to leave the apartment, and they'll definitely already be angry if his mission has failed. Still, he's hardly waiting around here to die. (But he can hold his own in a fight, of course he can, he isn't in this line of work for nothing.)

It's decided for him at 16:18 when his burner phone vibrates on the wooden table and he picks it up to reveal a message simply reading DON'T LEAVE, from his current handler.

Well, he supposes that's settled.

\----

The next morning, Enjolras wakes up at 08:54 and goes shopping.

At the supermarket, he buys a baguette, a tub of butter, a box of grapes and a bottle of scotch. He stuffs them all into his backpack, which is empty except for the weight of the concealed compartment, still closed.

He leaves the supermarket at 09:21 and wanders out onto the street. His neighbourhood is an old section of the city, like that of Le Café Musain, but a little more commercialised. Chain stores line the pavements, but it is still attractive, and Enjolras enjoys a leisurely stroll throughout the streets as he heads back to his apartment. The heat has not relented, but it is still early enough that it is pleasant instead of stifling, and he wanders down the middle of the road, light suffusing his hair and grasping his skin in a grip somewhere between an embrace and a bruise.

When he arrives back at his apartment, the door is ajar. Enjolras pushes it open gently, stepping through the living room and into his kitchen.

'Don't move,' says Grantaire pleasantly.

He is seated at Enjolras's kitchen table, yellow-gold turning his brown-black hair to fine spun amber. He is smiling. There is a pistol cocked in his hand, the safety off. The barrel is aimed at Enjolras's head.

It is pointed in almost perfect alignment with the Colt in Enjolras's right hand.

'Hello, _James_ ,' Grantaire says. On the table before him lies a case file, which makes no sense, because _the_ case file, the one that looks exactly like this, is still in Enjolras's backpack.

Except Enjolras can make out that the photo on display is not of Grantaire, but of a blond man. And the name, Enjolras cannot quite read it from this distance, but he knows all the same what it says.

JULIEN ENJOLRAS.

Enjolras's eyes trace down to where the corner of the file does not quite cover the sweeping trace of the carving on the table, the curve of the long line as it sweeps up to form the letter R.

R. French _aire_. Grantaire.

'Someone ordered a hit on me and contracted you to do it,' Enjolras says, voice calm. It's not a new realisation, although the words haven't exactly formed together in his head until now. Hearing them together gives him a strange sense of catharsis. 'Who?'

Grantaire smiles, and his teeth aren't on display but it is no less predatory. 'I'd guess the same people who ordered _you_ to take out _me_. Quite the neat set up, isn't it?'

'So you're working for the same people I am? In the same job, you're a contract killer too?'

'Sweetheart, you don't have to make it sound like a question,' Grantaire says, smile twisting into a smirk.

Enjolras's gun hand stays steady. So does Grantaire's. 'How long have you known?'

Grantaire lifts his left shoulder in a shrug. 'The same morning you did, I presume. I had advantages than you, to be fair. The first was more of a coincidence than anything... it was just so unbelievably helpful when you got into my train carriage that morning.'

Enjolras blinks slowly, the final piece slotting into place. He _has_ heard Grantaire's voice before. 'You were the guy on the underground who stole my fucking phone. The morning I first went to the Musain.'

'See, now you sound more assertive,' Grantaire says. 'It suits you.'

'You already knew who I was that morning,' says Enjolras, ignoring him. 'Because you'd just been given my file.'

'Exactly! The whole thing was so ridiculously well timed for me, you have no idea. I realised who you were a few minutes after you got on. I thought maybe I'd try to tail you. And then you just - fell into me, and your phone was unlocked in your hand, and... well, I couldn't pass on that opportunity. You caught onto losing it more quickly than I was hoping, but thank fuck because then you were too busy looking for it to even notice my face. That could've undone a lot, if you'd looked up... but the whole thing was entirely impromptu. Anyway, it worked out.'

'Why take the phone, anyway?' Enjolras says, and Grantaire shrugs. He seems happy to talk all day now that they're here.

'I thought you were just another target, and they hadn't given me your address, just like they didn't give you mine. I thought I'd get some information off it, but what I got was a lot weirder - there were barely any numbers or personal details to be found, but you were searching for directions to Le Café Musain.'

'Don't tell me you figured all of it out off whatever vague hunch that gave you,' Enjolras says, eyes narrowed skeptically.

'No, not at all. I was fortunate again because when I turned up at the Musain the next Tuesday to see Eponine, there you were. Maybe I wouldn't normally have been suspicious, but it was already a weird coincidence, and you looked like such a stereotype and you called yourself _James Denn_... that was a pretty terrible cover, by the way.'

'Well, by your own admission, if you hadn't already noticed me you wouldn't have been suspicious, so it can't have been that awful,' Enjolras snaps. 'And I hardly expected to be cross examined.'

Grantaire laughs. 'Okay, fine. But Eponine knows about my job and after you left I told her all about what a weird coincidence it was and she said you'd showed up on the Friday morning, for the first time, and I think that's when I really started to realise something was definitely up. Anyway, I left the café and started heading home, and I realised you were tailing me. After that... it was pretty much confirmed.'

'So, without the thing on the train and Eponine, you wouldn't have known,' Enjolras says, eyes narrowed, because he hates being outsmarted and he particularly resents this case because it isn't even particularly Grantaire's talent that has led to it, come _on_.

'Yeah, I guess. Murphy's Law, though,' Grantaire says, the picture of casualness except for the gun unwaveringly straight in his hand. Enjolras has been staring down its barrel to avoid looking at Grantaire: now he moves his eyes sideways to watch the other man, and finds Grantaire's eyes are already on him. He's not as relaxed as he seems, either: he's intent on Enjolras's every move, tense, waiting for him to take action first.

Enjolras decides he won't oblige that for a while longer. He wants _all_ the answers, and they're at a pretty decided stalemate that'll hold for a while longer. 'So, you hid from me when I followed you home, then followed _me_ home and found the apartment?'

Grantaire nods. 'Yeah. You didn't exactly make it difficult.'

'I didn't know there was another assassin tracking me,' Enjolras grinds out.

Grantaire shrugs. 'In this line of work, darling, it's a pretty dangerous assumption to make that there's not, don't you think?'

That mocking lilt is back in his voice. 'Darling?' Enjolras hisses.

Grantaire looks at him, utterly unembarrassed. 'You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen, I drew you for a reason, but when you're annoyed you're... _cute_.'

'I am _not_ -' Enjolras begins, then uncharacteristically shuts up and orders his face into an emotionless arrangement. 'Right. So you decided to carve up my dining table.'

Grantaire looks innocent. 'I _am_ an actual artist. And I wanted to leave you a calling card.'

'A calling card, really? Did you become a contract killer because you liked spy films when you were little?' Enjolras demands.

Grantaire blinks. 'Maybe.'

'If you hadn't left those decorative Rs everywhere I wouldn't have figured you out, and you could've shot me in the head when I walked in just now, non-forewarned and weaponless.'

'Who says I want to shoot you in the head?' says Grantaire, suddenly more serious. 'I'm pretty annoyed, actually. Our employers gave us orders to kill each other. I don't know why exactly, but it doesn't demonstrate that they give much of a shit whether I live or die, and the same goes for you. Right now, your interests should be more aligned with mine than with theirs.'

'The gun pointed at my head says otherwise,' Enjolras comments, although Grantaire talks a lot of sense.

'You're pointing one at me too!'

'You already had yours out when I came in.'

'You already had yours out before you even entered!'

'Right, I see why you're so hopeful we can reach some kind of cooperation in our mutual interests as potential fugitives,' Enjolras remarks. 'Seeing as we'd clearly work together so well.'

Grantaire holds up his left hand. 'Hey, I haven't said anything about being fugitives. Do you really want to run away with me, sweetheart? I'm flattered.'

Enjolras throws up his own left hand. It's kind of comical how restricted they are with their right arms fixed forcibly by the pistols in their hands, neither willing to waver. 'I assumed that was where the whole 'our interests should be aligned with each other and not our employers' speech was going, but please, correct me.'

'No, you're right, it was,' admits Grantaire, seeming cheerful enough at the concession. 'Okay, Julien, will you please abscond from the business with me so we can be rogue assassin partners? Maybe figure out why the fuck we were told to kill each other?'

'Enjolras,' says Enjolras without thinking.

'Well, we already have something in common, then,' Grantaire says. 'I like it, Enj.'

On his lips, it turns into _ange_ , but Enjolras doesn't want to call that out, because he doesn't want to admit he thinks Grantaire is calling him by yet another pet name (he definitely is, the bastard, but Enjolras is sure he'd deny it).

'I know nothing about you,' Enjolras states flatly.

'Well, you know my childhood friends, tragic backstory and current hobbies,' says Grantaire. 'I don't even know those things about you, _James_.'

'Most of the things I said in the café were true,' Enjolras admits after a moment. 'Except after Poli Sci I became an assassin, and... well, the hobbies were all lies. Who the fuck goes running in this heat voluntarily?'

'And that,' says Grantaire, 'is why your cover was suspicious. Plus you're definitely too pretty to be a bona fide straight, sporty asshole.'

'... thanks?' Enjolras says, after a moment. He's struck by the absurdity of the pair of them, having this conversation in his kitchen with guns pointing at each others' heads.

Actually, all of a sudden its just his gun, pointing at Grantaire's head.

Grantaire has _lowered_ his gun. What the hell is he thinking?

'What the hell are you thinking?' says Enjolras aloud.

Grantaire shrugs, this time with both shoulders. 'Well, I've never been particularly intelligent where my own safety is concerned.'

'I could shoot you right now,' Enjolras warns. 'And go back with my contract fulfilled and continue with my life as normal.'

'Sure,' says Grantaire reasonably, 'but you'll always be wondering if next week will be the day your next contract has also been hired out to kill you again, and he might not be as nice as me. Or maybe they won't bother with that this time, maybe they'll just - get your handler to shoot you dead in this apartment before you can even reach for your Colt. If that sounds like a good life to you, like returning to _normal_ , then... go ahead and shoot.'

He's calling Enjolras's bluff. Enjolras's finger flicks open the safety catch; the gun is fully cocked and still pointing straight between Grantaire's eyes.

Then Enjolras pulls the trigger.

The bullet buries itself with a resounding crack in the wall behind Grantaire's head, so close it causes a breeze strong enough to leave a groove through Grantaire's dark curls. Grantaire jumps in his chair, eyes pressed shut tight, composure finally broken as he hunches over, braced in anticipation for the horrible pain that he must suppose will come with being shot in the head.

When his eyes flick cautiously open, Enjolras is leaning forward over him, hands braced casually on the table, devoid of his gun. Grantaire's neck twists slowly to take in the bullet buried in the wall behind him, then back so his eyes can meet Enjolras's.

'I missed,' says Enjolras, feeling a strange heady rush of exhilaration, and he thinks he might be about to burst into a laugh and that would be incredibly strange in this moment, but Grantaire beats him to it, stunned and startled expression cracking into a wide grin.

'Partners?' he says, stretching an empty hand out to Enjolras, and Enjolras takes it with barely a moment of hesitation. The kitchen light is butter-gold-silk on their hands and red-gold-copper on the minute whorls of Grantaire's hair and eyes.

Grantaire, Enjolras muses, is very attractive. Much more so in reality than in a file case photo.

'Well,' Grantaire says brightly. 'Shall we get the fuck out of here?'

Enjolras raises his backpack. 'I brought bread. And grapes. And scotch.'

'Fuck, I love you,' sighs Grantaire. Enjolras knows that there is absolutely no reason to read into that, that they've known each other for a week and have been trying to kill each other for much of that and the comment is one of Grantaire's blithe throwaway remarks, and doesn't really mean anything at all. He possibly blushes anyway.

They leave the apartment together at 11:31. Neither of them look back.

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up being about ten times less dark than i originally intended. this may be the first assassin au on this site where no one even gets injured, because it completely defeats the point of the assassin au, but grantaire turned out to be much more interested in flirting with enjolras than killing him. 
> 
> if anyone at all enjoys reading this, i would be down to write a follow up with more actual action scenes, much more enj and r flirting and sexual tension while they shoot people together, so please let me know!
> 
> love always <3


End file.
